Martin Lewis shares credit card debt tip that Brits ‘can’t afford not to check’

Martin Lewis took listeners “back to basics” with a credit card debt extravaganza on his self-titled BBC podcast, with the finance guru also taking some questions from fans. The Money Saving Expert founder heard how one listener was quite stuck with his credit card debt as he couldn’t manage to funnel through the monthly interest to start paying back his debt.

BBC presenter Nihal Arthanayake read out the fan’s concerns on the latest episode of The Martin Lewis podcast: “How can I move my credit card to somewhere else to save on interest payments? (My) credit score is lower now and can’t get anything yet. I’m losing £100 a month on interest. Any help appreciated.”

Without hesitating, Martin advised: “If you have debt on a credit card and you are paying interest and you can’t afford to pay that credit card off in full, then you can’t afford not to check whether you can get a balance transfer. A balance transfer is when you get a new credit card that pays off the debt on your existing credit cards for you so you now owe the new credit card but at a cheaper interest rate, usually zero percent.”

Listing out the top balance transfers available at the moment, the MSE expert suggested Tesco Bank’s 29-month offering with a 3.49 percent fee, Virgin’s 28-month with a 3.25 percent fee and another Virgin card for 20 months with two percent fee. On a shorter timeline, Martin also recommended Natwest’s 13-month card with no fee.

The finance guru explained that the fee on each of these accounts is a “one-off fee on the amount of debt that you shift”. All of these accounts have zero percent interest rates, allowing Brits to transfer their debt and start paying it off immediately without the barrier of monthly interest preventing them from making a dent.

He advised: “My rule of thumb, if you have a choice of cards, go for the card with the lowest fee in the amount of time that you’re sure you can clear the debt. If you know you can clear it in 13 months then go for no fee but if you’re not sure just go for the longest and accept the fee.”

Martin insisted “everybody should” be looking into balance transfers and revealed listeners can use an eligibility checker to do a soft search for the best deals that are most likely to accept them based on their credit score and affordability test. He also assured that these checks “won’t impact your future creditworthiness”.

With some final words of encouragement for those who might’ve tried this method before and been denied by financial institutions, Martin added: “Don’t assume that because one company has rejected you others will. There is no universal credit score, there is no one number that dictates whether you will borrow or not. Each lender scores you differently. In some cases no one will, but this is the start point.”